Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Justice Fits in the Gospel | New Testament | Revelation 14

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

What do you think of when you share the gospel? God's kindness? God's forgiveness? Do you ever think of God's judgement? Probably not as much. In today's episode, Patrick looks at the presentation of the gospel in Revelation 14 to discover the role of justice. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Prepare your heart to celebrate Jesus. Sign up to have the 'I Am Your God' Advent Devotional delivered directly to your inbox starting Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Revelation 14

Welcome to 10 minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. If someone asked you to summarize the gospel, what would you say? I ask because Revelation 14 includes a gospel presentation quite unlike any I have ever heard. And I can't help but wonder why and what we can learn from it. What if our vision of the gospel is missing a key ingredient? If that were the case, I'd certainly want to know.

and I bet you would too. As Revelation 14 opens, John sees a vision of 144,000 people worshipping the lamb, who is the king, Jesus. And John later makes it clear that these people symbolize everyone who dies in this life, who gives their allegiance to King Jesus. But he has a particular question in focus that many people in his day were asking, if Jesus really is in charge of the universe, why do his people suffer? Why do some of them, even? die? Why are they persecuted? How can a good king allow that? And John's ultimate answer is that in the end, on the day of our resurrection, we will be vindicated. We will be declared in the right by God. We will be made holy by the blood of Jesus and live with him forever. In the end, God sets everything

right. But in this life, it's easy to forget about the future. John wants us to remember the future, to live toward the future. But here's the thing. The redemption of God's people isn't the only thing that will happen in the future. John also says that those who don't worship Jesus will face his justice,

which finally takes us back to where we started. What is the good news? What is the gospel? Does your understanding of the gospel have space for the good news that Jesus will judge the living and the dead, that Jesus will one day bring justice on earth as it is in heaven?

Before we go any further, I want to read Revelation's gospel proclamation together, just to highlight the point, Revelation 146. Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who lived on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people. Let's pause for a second. There's this angelic messenger, and he appears carrying what? The gospel. He's carrying the good news. John goes on to tell us what's included in this angel's gospel message.

through three other angels. So here's the gospel according Revelation. He said in a loud voice, here's the first part of the gospel, fear God and give him glory because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and the springs of water. A second angel followed, and so we're going to get more gospel proclamation here, and he said this, fallen. Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries. Now we're about to get the third angel with the next part of the gospel message.

A third angel followed him and said in a loud voice. If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their foreheads or their hands, they too will drink the wine of God's fury, which has been poured out full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the lamb, and the smoke of their torment will rise forever and ever. there will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image or for anyone who receives the mark of its name this calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of god who keep commands and remain

faithful to jesus then i heard a voice from heaven saying write this blessed are the dead who die in the lord from now on yes says the spirit they will rest from their labor for their deeds will follow them Okay, so remember where we started. What is the gospel? You've got to admit this is not a normal gospel message, at least not the kind that we're used to hearing. When we think about the gospel, perhaps we think about the good news that we're saved by grace through faith, or perhaps that Jesus forgives our sins. Now, those are both true statements. In fact, in other places, forgiveness of sins specifically is included in the gospel message. It's even implied here when John speaks about those who die in Jesus, they've clearly had their sins forgiven. But the main note of this gospel presentation isn't

forgiveness. It's judgment and justice. So how in the world does that fit into the gospel? If the gospel is fundamentally the good news that Jesus is the risen king, then it must answer at least one question. What will this king do to those who rebel against his kingdom? The answer we most often give is true. He offers amnesty. He offers forgiveness. If you turn away from your sins and give him your allegiance, he will rescue you. But we don't often like to say the other side of the coin. He will bring justice against those who reject him, who serve the idols of their day, who participate in the ways of the beast in Babylon. We don't say it because it doesn't sound like good news. That sounds like really bad news, but it's not bad news. At least it wasn't to the Christians

in John's Day. They were being persecuted and executed by the beastly Babylon of Rome. Rome. They were unjustly imprisoned. They were unjustly murdered. And so for them, the news that Jesus not only saw the injustice, but would one day set it right, well, that was very good news for them. The truth is that because we experience far less persecution and far fewer threats of violence for our faith, we struggled to see the goodness of God's justice. But we can't forget that this isn't the case for many Christians around the world. For Christians living under violent, totalitarian governments especially. And so this passage is inviting us into solidarity with them. It's also inviting us to remember that even the smallest wrongs we experience are seen by God. Our calling is not to

avenge ourselves on others, but instead to wait for God's justice. Our calling is to offer the first half of the gospel that Jesus forgives even those who hurt us while hoping in the second half of the gospel, the future promise that Jesus will set straight every injustice. in the resurrection. So where are you tempted to take over for Jesus and to enact his vengeance? The good news isn't that you can set things right, but that he can set things right and he will set things right in the future. In a strange way, this passage about God's judgment is a call for us to embrace nonviolent resistance, to turn the other cheek, to walk the extra mile. Why? Because we know that every injustice done unto us, well, that's not the end of the story.

God will see it out in the end. There's good news. Justice is coming.